This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture where you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music (including of course Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of…
Culture
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Kyiv or Kiev? Zelensky or Zelenskyy? For Ukraine, spelling is a political act
As tanks advance and homes burn while the Russian invasion of Ukraine intensifies, the spelling of place names may seem like a minor concern. But spelling — and the English transliteration of it — can have tremendous political significance. Spelling can also indicate how credible a news source is, and it can clarify which side…
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Books In new book, former AG Bill Barr praises Jared Kushner’s knack for navigating Trump chaos
Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, said early in the 2020 presidential race that Trump’s erratic and contentious behavior would lead to defeat, former Attorney General Bill Barr writes in his memoir, to be released Tuesday. “As they say, there is only one man who can beat Donald Trump and his…
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Books What happens when a New York kvetcher meets modern-day kitsch?
It is hard to imagine Rabbi Akiva eating lime Jell-O, Maimonides living in a trailer park, or Martin Buber twirling a baton. These are all, according to the famous mid-century comedian Lenny Bruce, quintessentially goyish activities. I.B. Singer is more likely to have slathered his cream cheese on pumpernickel than white bread. Bruce defined Jewishness…
The Latest
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Why Peter Bogdanovich’s overlooked masterpiece still matters (and so does the rest of his career)
In 1961, Peter Bogdanovich convinced the film curators at the Museum of Modern Art that they should a) organize an Orson Welles retrospective, and b) let him write the accompanying monograph. These were no small achievements, since a) there had never been an Orson Welles retrospective in the United States and b) Peter Bogdanovich was…
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Can a Christian theater company put on a good Purim spiel?
I learned about "Queen Esther" from a TV ad. How could I resist going?
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How a Yiddish encyclopedia became a document of the Holocaust and Jewish culture
“The General Encyclopedia” (Di Algemeyne Entsiklopedye) was a Yiddish language publishing project created in Berlin, Paris, and New York from 1932 to 1966. It was begun optimistically in Berlin to celebrate the 70th birthday of the Russian-Jewish historian Simon Dubnow, who would be murdered in the street by Nazis in Latvia just over a decade…
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How one vintage watch has been making cantors’ lives easier for more than 50 years
Produced between 1960 and 1972, the Bulova Accutron emits an F sharp note, perfect for cantors on Shabbat when tuning forks aren't allowed.
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In America, as in Ukraine, the unthinkable has become thinkable
In his classic work “The Captive Mind,” the Polish poet and Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz remarks on our tendency to see the world we have always lived in as natural. The buildings on our street “seem more like rocks rising out of the earth” and the clothes we wear as we do our jobs in…
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In two rarely-shown films, a different view of Israel
Nina Menkes made two films set in Israel nearly 30 years apart. Both are about not belonging anywhere. The director, who just debuted the documentary “Brainwashed” at Sundance, comes to her setting and subject in earnest, if perhaps at some remove. Born to European immigrant parents, who fled the Nazis and fought in the Palmach…
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Babyn Yar, Putin’s war in Ukraine, and the paintings my grandfather never got to see exhibited
When Russian bombs fell on the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial in Kyiv the other day, killing more people on top of the tens of thousands slaughtered there by the Nazis, it was an especially painful moment for me. I had been invited to have my grandfather’s paintings – the first artistic renditions of the massacre…
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How Jewish women pioneered the fitness movement (for better and worse)
The women appear perfectly coiffed, makeup impeccable. They’re dressed in shorts, blouses, light sweaters and earrings to match. You might think they were headed off to a picnic in the park. But no, it’s 1958 and they’ve arrived at a calisthenics or “figure-shaping” class. Well, actually this is a fictionalized recreation of what women’s group…
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News Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s selection as JTS commencement speaker roils graduating class
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Culture An Israeli genocide scholar looks to Israel’s history to understand ‘what went wrong’
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News Protesters picket Manhattan synagogue over Israel real estate sale, testing Mamdani and new law
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Opinion I’m an Orthodox student in NYC. I’m grateful Mamdani vetoed the school buffer bill
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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Looking Forward My artist grandmother nearly made aliyah. I don’t know what she’d think of Israel today
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.